An Outsider Finally Gets His Hearing

One of the big advantages of the annual BBC Proms concert series is the ability to stage works that would hardly ever get a performance under other circumstances due to the forces required, the venue required or simply commercial viability. A highlight of the 2010 season was a performance of The Music Of The Spheres by Danish composer Rued Langaard performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choirs conducted by Thomas Dausgaard with choir master Soren Kinch Hansen. Those same forces were able to put on the work on one earlier occasion for the purposes of the live recording contained on this disc. Dating from the beginning of the 20th century, The Music Of The Spheres is an experiemnal work that sounds as if it could date from much later. The forces required are a huge orchestra, choirs and solo soprano ( Inger Dam Jensen in this case ) with off stage musicians etc, all of which make a staging difficult. But these forces are in fact used very sparingly and most of the work is subdued with small filigree details and only the occasional extraordinary outburst from the entire company, such as the sustained choral and instrumental chords that resonate for around a minute each. The disk contains two further works for chorus and orchestra, From The Abyss and The End Of Time. These are not quite so far outside the norms of the time but all three pieces involve a musical contrast between a chaotic doomed world and a vision of celestial beauty and light. Langaard was under appreciated, if not scorned, in his own country during his lifetime and it is good to see Danish institutions finally championing this music.